48 “They looked at his identity card and shot him dead” Six months of post-electoral violence in Côte d’Ivoire 5. APPLICABLE INTERNATIONAL LAW For part of the period covered in this report there has been a non-international armed conflict in Côte d’Ivoire with parties to the conflict comprizing the forces supporting outgoing President Laurent Gbagbo and those forces and groups supporting President Alassane Ouattara. Applicable international law includes international human rights law which is applicable in both conflict and non-conflict situations and is binding on state actors. International humanitarian law applies only in situations of armed conflict. Under international criminal law, individuals who perpetrate certain serious violation of international humanitarian law or international human rights law can be held criminally responsible. International humanitarian law International humanitarian law, also known as the laws of armed conflict, contains the rules and principles that seek to protect primarily those who are not participating in hostilities, notably civilians, but also certain combatants, including those who are wounded or captured. It sets out standards of humane conduct and limits the means and methods of conducting military operations. Its central purpose is to limit, to the extent feasible, human suffering in times of armed conflict. Côte d’Ivoire is a party to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their two Additional Protocols of 1977: the principal international humanitarian law instruments. Many of the specific rules included in these treaties, and all of those set out below also form part of customary international humanitarian law and are thus binding on all parties to any conflict, including armed groups.31 Violations of many of these rules may amount to war crimes. A fundamental rule of international humanitarian law is that parties to any conflict must at all times “distinguish between civilians and combatants”, especially in that “attacks may only be directed against combatants” and “must not be directed against civilians.”32 A similar rule requires parties to distinguish between “civilian objects” and “military objectives”. These rules are part of the fundamental principle of “distinction”. For the purposes of distinction, anyone who is not a member of the armed forces of a party to the conflict is a civilian, and the civilian population comprizes all persons who are not combatants.33 Civilians are protected against attack unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.34 Civilian objects are all objects (that is, buildings, structures, places, and other physical property or environments) which are not “military objectives”, and military objectives are “limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose partial or total destruction, capture or neutralisation, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.”35 Civilian objects are protected against attack, unless and for such time as they become military objectives because all of the criteria for a military objective just described Amnesty International May 2011 Index: AFR 31/002/2011